Why won't my iMac (Snow Leopard) iCal sync with both iCloud and iPhone?

Once you enable iCloud, your iPhone will no longer sync properly (or at all) with iCal UNLESS you upgrade to OSX Lion. I tried various techniques yesterday for about an hour to see if I could get all three on the same page, but I could never get it to work. Items would appear in one or two place, but never all three. iCal won't sync at all to iCloud without Lion. This is not a secret: Apple states in its promotional materials that you need Lion to use iCloud on your Mac.

I posted this to another similar question last night, but it needs to be repeated:

This is the kind of thing that I hate, hate, hate about Apple.

Why is it that if I bought a Mac before July of this year, I must pay to upgrade my operating system in order to take advantage of iCloud? Meanwhile, a Windows Vista SP2 user, who bought a new computer in May 2009, already has everything they need on their computer to use iCloud.

Why was it possible for Apple to write a free iCloud Control Panel that was compatible with existing versions of Windows, but Mac users must buy an entirely new operating system?

It's not the price that bothers me – I've already paid for it. But Lion was such a buggy mess and the interface "improvements" so useless that I "downgraded" back to SL. Now I find that I must choose between a terrible operating system and the features in iCloud.

If Apple gave Mac users the same amount of backwards compatibility that it gives to Windows users, people with OSX 10.5 (Leopard) would be able to use iCloud. That's something to think about the next time you go to purchase a new computer.

(P.S. Something else to think about: If you bought a Mac before October 2007 (when OSX 10.5 was introduced), your computer won't run iTunes 10.5 unless you buy an upgrade. But a PC user, who purchased their computer as long ago as Sept. 2004(!), can run iTunes without an OS upgrade.)

I follow all that you have said and am just as frustrated. I hope all who are experiencing these problems will send their dissatisfaction to those in charge at Apple. Maybe we should stage a sit in!!!

BTW---besides the iPhone problem is there also a problem setting up an account in iCal to sync with MobileMe/iCloud? All of my iCal entries have somehow been lost and I cannot add a new account using iCloud for some reason

I am not too happy about Apple leaving out us SL users either, but that being said the ical sync is working flawlessly on my imac. There will not be an icloud reference in your system preferences. You need to set up the separate account in ical. once that is setup you must make sure you are posting your ical appointments to the icloud account, not "on my mac". I cannot get the contacts (address book) working though.

sllorca,

That sounds like a pretty smart solution -- accessing iCloud directly from iCal. But how do you do it?

Could you share how to set up the account on iCal? What are the settings?

Here is what worked for me:

Go to iCal > Preferences… and hit the Accounts tab. Clicked + to create a new account and selected CalDav as Account type. Then I entered the following:

User name: AppleID email address

Password: AppleID password

Server address: p06-caldav.icloud.com

Also automatic refresh does not seem to work, so I changed to 15 minutes.

Next click create. The account loaded all my iCloud calendars into the sidebar in iCal 4.0.4, listed under the heading of my AppleID email address.

Go back under Accounts and delete (click –) old account.

Done. Good luck. Still trying a workaround for Address Book.

What 'Account Template' should I select? It doesn't work for me for iCal Server.

I've input my user name and Password and have changed the server address to p06-caldav.icloud.com. Do I need to change the Server path to anything specific or leave it as is?

Thanks!

Deb

"Correct answer" works like a charm. Thanks.

I did Bickity's iCloud/iCal sync above, but skipped the step of deleting my old account. I skipped this because my old account is my MobileMe account and when I added the new account my calendars didn't switch over. Help!

I also did Bickity's iCloud/iCal sync and it worked beautifully...even my iPhone 4S iCal is synched now too. Thank you so much Bickity, I've missed iCal for a year now with the expiration of MobilMe and it's nice to be synced again. I did delete my old MobilMe account and everything still worked with all the info there in the new account. Even leaving "Refresh calendars" in preferences at "Push" worked instantly too!!!

Addendum to my post above...last sentence. I found out that leaving "Refresh calendars" in preferences at "Push" did not work well and so I reset it to what Bickity said, "15 minutes" and all is working perfectly. Sorry, next time I'll follow directions Bickity 😝